Although there are many studies concerning social behavior in various members of the family Canidae, there have been very few studies even on captive canids reporting quantitative data relevant to social development. Furthermore, no detailed field observations are available concerning the behavioral development of identified individual animals. The variability of both social ontogeny and social organization within the family Canidae and genus Canis makes this a good group of animals on which to perform comparative developmental studies. I propose to conduct a two-year field study in order to gain a better understanding of the relationship between the social ontogeny of identified individual coyotes and later patterns of dispersal. I will test the hypothesis that there are overt behavioral antecedents of dispersal and that observation of behavioral development in individual animals and determination of their behavioral phenotype will allow prediction of (1) which animals disperse as juveniles and (2) the manner in which they leave their natal group.